Oscar season has come to end, and audiences are still waiting for the next big Marvel release. This week, the in-between-ness can definitely be felt. Coming up we have a comedic funeral, and a creepy stalker story, so get ready for Tyler Perry’s A Madea Family Funeral and Greta.
Just remember, I'm not reviewing these movies, but rather predicting where they'll end up on the Tomatometer. Let's take a look at This Rotten Week has to offer.
It’s always fun to get the change to run through Tyler Perry’s critical resume - and I get to do it regularly twice per year. No one does rotten critical consensus quite like this guy. It’s a lock time in and time out for these films to finish with a mostly dismal critical response. More than anything, I’m impressed by the consistency. Let’s just look at his Madea catalogue, because she’s making another appearance this week in Tyler Perry’s A Madea Family Funeral:
Boo 2: A Madea Halloween (5%)
Boo: A Madea Halloween (20%)
A Madea’s Christmas (20%)
Madea’s Witness Protection (20%)
Madea’s Big Happy Family (37%)
Madea Goes to Jail (28%)
Madea’s Family Reunion (25%)
Diary of a Mad Black Woman (16%)
That’s an average of 20% over eight movies. In other words, not good. But these flicks make bank, covering around half a billion in box office sales over the course of the franchise. I expect more of the same with Tyler Perry’s A Madea Family Funeral, which is said to be the last feature apperance for the titular character. The prediction matching the average of the franchise seems appropriate.
In the past, if a movie character found a random bag on the subway in New York City and returned it to the owner, the two would eventually fall in love rom-com style. That’s usually how that kind of scenario works out. But not this time, folks. When Frances (Chloe Grace Moretz) finds the bag belonging to Greta (Isabelle Huppert) and they meet, the former thinks the latter is something of the mother figure she needs in her life, but that turns out to very much not be the case. Turns out Greta is a high level super-stalker and shit gets real weird real quick.
Critics have been generally positive about Greta so far, with the Tomatometer sitting at 73% with 22 reviews posted. That’s a solid start for a film that could easily be a hacked up, cliched mess. The general tone of reviews is that Neil Jordan’s film is mostly B-level script stuff, but the female leads carry it all the way through. Expect the score to dip some over the course of the week.
There was only one movie on the docket last week, and it ended up as predictive win. How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (Predicted: 95% Actual: 91%) fell easily within range and was a successful follow up to How To Train Your Dragon (98%) and the first sequel (92%). Getting the three films in a trilogy (or any franchise) all above the 90% mark is quite the accomplishment. This marks a massive win for DreamWorks, which has had its fair share of hits of the years, but critically, this is their most consistently great franchise.
Next time around we’ve got a big one with Captain Marvel. It’s gonna be a Rotten Week!
